Canadian police have arrested 21 alleged online child predators and rescued a sexually abused boy, officials said
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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police partnered with half a dozen police forces in Canada's western prairies to identify suspects who possessed and distributed child abuse images across peer-to-peer file sharing networks.u00a0
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"With their activities, obviously they are using common file-sharing networks and common technology and common programs to chat and look for kids who possibly networked with other offenders but none of the individuals (arrested) were directly related (to each other)," a police spokesman told a nationally televised news conference yesterday.u00a0
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More than 100 computers and hard drives were seized along with hundreds of thousands of images. Authorities also rescued a 14-year-old boy identified in some of the images who had been sexually abused over the past five years.u00a0
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His abuser was a friend of the boy's family who was arrested in June and sentenced to 30 months in prison
